Elon Musk has several credentials to his name. He is SpaceX’s founder, Tesla CEO, owner of X, head of Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and now an educator.
Last week, on November 14, Texas authorities granted an initial permit to Elon Musk’s pre-kindergarten Montessori school — dubbed “Ad Astra” (Latin for “to the stars”).
The question many are asking now is what kind of school is Musk’s institution? What will the curriculum be like? And would you enrol your children in this facility?
What is Elon Musk’s new school venture in Texas?
Elon Musk’s school, known as Ad Astra, is located in Bastrop, a picturesque ranch town that has become home to Musk’s other companies, including SpaceX and The Boring Company. According to reports, Musk has grand plans for Ad Astra; he plans to build a primary and secondary school, and eventually a university, if all goes well. For this purpose, the billionaire has set aside nearly $100 million via a non-profit called the X Foundation.
For now, the plans focus on the preschool, which has the capacity to enrol 54 students — ranging from the age of three to six. The institution is located on a 40-acre former horse ranch, which also houses a basketball court.
A news report by Fortune stated that the preschool’s state application showed that it would be run by the CEO of Xplor Education, Greg Marick. He will be joined by three other faculty members.
The preschool began advertising for applications in August, saying it was awaiting its licence from Texan authorities. However, it faced some delays, resulting in the granting of the licence now.
Ad Astra is launching in Bastrop, Texas! Applications for the 2024-2025 school year are now open.https://t.co/jOCsILQjj2
— Ad Astra (@adastra) July 31, 2024
What will be taught at Ad Astra?
The school vows to be different from traditional education institutions. On the school’s website, its mission reads: “To foster curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking in the next generation of problem solvers.”
The site further reads, “Ad Astra’s approach to education is centred around hands-on, project-based learning, where children are encouraged to explore, experiment, and discover solutions to real-world problems. Ad Astra offers a progressive learning environment that emphasises the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) into its curriculum.”
The focus is on exploration and tasks like colouring, collage-making, and studying maps and globes, will be undertaken.
According to the school’s website, students will be provided with uninterrupted work periods that allow them to fully engage in tasks that they have chosen for themselves under the careful, individual guidance of their teachers.
Moreover, classrooms will be organised in multi-age groupings. This means children of different ages will be grouped into one, with the school saying that such a set-up will foster lasting relationships.
A Fortune news report said that the curriculum is inspired by the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs, two psychologists and educators, to “teach young people to become responsible, respectful, and resourceful members of our community”.
The school will also focus on the holistic development of children by inculcating social and emotional life skills. Children will be taught grace, courtesy, and respect along with empathy and compassion, which will result in well-rounded individuals, who are capable of making positive contributions to society.
It’s unclear how much parents will pay for their children to attend the Bastrop Ad Astra school.
And how does one get into Ad Astra? The school’s website states that Ad Astra School admits students based on merit, regardless of any race, colour, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programmes, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, national and ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programmes, and athletic and other school-administered programmes.
Where did the idea of Ad Astra come to Musk?
While the idea of Elon Musk building a school in Texas is new, his experiments with education go way back — almost 10 years.
In 2014, Musk pulled out five of his children from their prestigious private school in Los Angeles and set them up in a SpaceX conference room with a few of his colleagues’ children and a tutor. He called it Ad Astra too, but after the tech mogul’s children graduated, it spun out into an independent remote-only school called “Astra Nova” in 2020, according to an interview the cofounder gave in 2021.
When asked about it, Musk in a 2015 interview said that he didn’t like the way “regular schools” were run and he wanted to try out his far superior ideas. These included a curriculum that involved battling robots with flame-throwers, but no music, sports or languages.
He said, “It’s important to teach problem-solving, or teach to the problem and not the tools. Let’s say you’re trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be saying, ‘We’re going to teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches.’ This is a very difficult way to do it. A much better way would be, like, ‘Here’s the engine. Now let’s take it apart. How are we gonna take it apart? Oh you need a screwdriver!’”
The school also didn’t have a grade system — all the children went through the same grade at the same time, like an assembly line.
What about Musk’s Utopia in Texas?
Notably, the Ad Astra school in Texas is part of Elon Musk’s
Snailbrook — a township he is building for his family and staff of all his companies. Musk calls it “a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River” where staff could both live and work.
Reports say that he has bought as many as 2,430 hectares (6,000 acres) in the Austin area where he plans to build everything from homes to factories, and even a church.
His move to Texas came in 2021 in response to California Governor Gavin Newsom signing into law a bill that would ban school districts from having policies that require parental notification if their child identifies as transgender.
With inputs from agencies